AMD Provides Performance Figures for Thief's Mantle Patch

A look at the numbers

AMD can talk about the benefits of its Mantle API until it's blue in the face, but what gamers really want to know is how the numbers work out once all the dust settles. To address those folks, the Sunnyvale chip designer sent us a handful of examples of performance boosts today's upcoming Mantle patch for Thief will bring to gamers, based on AMD's own internal testing.

A quick note before diving in: AMD focused on gamers who own "reasonably-priced CPUs," those being chips in the neighborhood of $150 to $250. These were then paired with what AMD considers sensible GPUs for each setup.

System 1

AMD FX-8350

AMD Radeon R9 280X

1080p, maximum settings

19 percent performance uplift with Mantle (45->53.8 fps)

System 2

AMD FX-8350

AMD Radeon R9 290X

1080p, maximum settings

49 percent performance uplift with Mantle (46->69.6 fps)

System 3

Intel Core i5 4670K

AMD Radeon R9 280X

1080p, maximum settings

5 percent performance uplift with Mantle (52.6->55.2 fps)

System 4

AMD A10-7700K

AMD Radeon R7 260X

1080p, high settings

23 percent performance uplift with Mantle (28->34.6 fps)

While AMD didn't provide benchmarks for "ultra-high end" systems, the company says even those rigs stand to gain around 5-10 percent better performance with Mantle. What's perhaps more interesting is the impact the Mantle patch demonstrated on System 4 above -- it went from being borderline unplayable to playable.

As we reported yesterday, today's patch will also make Thief the first TrueAudio-enabled game. AMD says TrueAudio will be utilized to calculate an effected "convolution reverb," which is a technique that mathematically simulates the echoes of a real-life location.